College President Bans Campus Wireless Networks.

Johnboy60

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Toronto, Canada (AHN) - The president of a Canadian university is not permitting wireless Internet access on campus because he fears the system's electromagnetic forces could harm students' health.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7002537010
 
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Helo

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I bet he thinks those kids could catch one of them viruses that are just EVERYWHERE online.

Personally I think this is a way to dodge spending some bucks. the danger of this type of set-up is along the same lines of the urban ledgend that cell phones give you cancer. Its juuuuuust plausible enough to people with little or no experience with that particular technology to sound plausible
 
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Voegelin

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Suspicions about cell phones is no "urban myth." Very expensive studies are on going. The latest two from the UK and Germany find a increased risk of glioma. One from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden finds no increase of that cancer but did find more acoustic neuroma in long term cell phone users.

Obviously there is some risk from cell phones. How much is the question. An experiment to do at home which shows the power of devices:

How to Cook an Egg With a Cell Phone

On the other hand, electromagnetic wave research developed by the Soviets may have therapeutic uses:

http://www.temple.edu/temple_times/2-9-06/milliwaves.html

Some defense applications as well:

http://www.sandia.gov/news-center/news-releases/2005/def-nonprolif-sec/active-denial.html

OUCH!
 
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LogicChristian

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Robert43 said:
Toronto, Canada (AHN) - The president of a Canadian university is not permitting wireless Internet access on campus because he fears the system's electromagnetic forces could harm students' health.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7002537010

The real reason is probably similar to the wireless ban in student housing at my school: the school wants to make more money from making one student connect to one ethernet port.
 
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Voegelin

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Lysenkoism bites back. Pseudo-scientific excuses are great when opposing windmills off Nantucket, destroying Dow Corning for dollars and pushing radical equalitarianism in the name of Kyoto. But when science is used to make it marginally more difficult for students to hook up or downloand music and inappropriate contento, well that is just going too far!
 
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TeddyKGB

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Voegelin said:
Lysenkoism bites back. Pseudo-scientific excuses are great when opposing windmills off Nantucket, destroying Dow Corning for dollars and pushing radical equalitarianism in the name of Kyoto. But when science is used to make it marginally more difficult for students to hook up or downloand music and inappropriate contento, well that is just going too far!
Remind me what particular science is being employed by the university president?
 
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chaim

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Voegelin said:
Lysenkoism bites back. Pseudo-scientific excuses are great when opposing windmills off Nantucket, destroying Dow Corning for dollars and pushing radical equalitarianism in the name of Kyoto. But when science is used to make it marginally more difficult for students to hook up or downloand music and inappropriate contento, well that is just going too far!

Big difference, this guys "science" is obviously bogus. Assuming cell phones may cause a marginal increase in brain cancer risk, you can estimate the risk from the wireless card in your computer. The RF output from a cell phone is 300 mW at ~1cm from your head. The power output from a wireless card is 100mW at ~1m. The electromagnetic field your head experiences from your wireless card is ~ 3x10^4 smaller than that from a cell phone. If he is worried about RF radiation he better be banning cell phone use as well.
 
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KerrMetric

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LogicChristian said:
The real reason is probably similar to the wireless ban in student housing at my school: the school wants to make more money from making one student connect to one ethernet port.

Exactly.
 
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SimplyMe

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Helo said:
You cant, its been tried with 100 cell phones, it doesnt work.

Here's a link to one of the pages debunking it. You would think when a website is called wymsey would make people a little suspicious.

“I really underestimated how many people would take it seriously,” he tells Gelf over email. “No other page on the site has grabbed people’s attention and ire button as much as this one. What seems to be happening is that it 'travels' from blog to blog, forum to forum. It was big in Australia last year and seems to be big in the US right now.”
According to Ivermee, the article got almost 50,000 hits during one week in September last year and last week got 18,500 hits. That number is sure to rise even more this week.
Why did he write the piece? “It was 6 years ago but I seem to recall that there was a lot of concern about people's brains getting fried and being from a radio/electronics background I found it all rather silly,” he writes. “So I thought I'd add to the silliness.”
 
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Helo

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They also tried it some time ago on a show called Braniac.

Brainiac is not the most scientific of science shows out there but it does get some things right.

They took 200 cellphones and divided them in half. 100 were placed around a raw egg. It was surrounded and covered by cell phones. The other 100 were programmed to dial the other 100 all at the same time.

They did it, pulled the egg out, cracked it open and got nothing but an eggy mess. It wasnt even warm.
 
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Silent Bob

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The egg cooking thing is stupid!

What is also stupid is this ban.

However electromagnetic radiation from cell phones is much greater than what you will recieve from a wireless network.

We recently did an exercise on my mobile communications course. Using an outdated phone (1 Watt output and 40% absorption by your head) you need to talk for 2 seconds in order to get the same radiation you would get from living in a house 100m away from a base station for 24 hours.

You may not be able to cook an egg but I wouldn't suggest talking on a mobile phone for very long periods of time and if you have to, use a hands free. It's just a good idea to avoid radiation but let's not get paranoid. You would be amazed if you knew how much radiation you are recieving right now without counting that CRT monitor that bombards some of us with electrons as we visit these forums.
 
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Helo

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Maybe thats why my fingernails have started glowing......

In all seriousness, I doubt we're exposed to a seriously harmful ammount of radiation on a daily basis. I spend probably 90% of my waking hours staring at a computer monitor. I dont notice anything on me glowing.

As I said before, this whole ban seems like a way to avoid paying for a huge network and the associated costs
 
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